Twinset

Looked at shipping either of our cars: have one I have owned from new for 4 years, but now has 100000 miles on it, but, because I have owned from new, would still get rated on £24000, when car is worth less than £6k....!! Is that still the case, BA and BATS? (Have to say, if I were in planning stage, prices of Disco 3s in UK are staggeringly low right now - buy one at £11k and ship next year might be an option.......)

Other one was a big 4x4 of the German variety: it was coming in at over £10k to ship inc all charges!! (plus I owed some finance, so was starting to look at a lot of money - car was around £30k when bought, but worth a lot less now courtesy of the current financial fiasco...:curse

So I sold it, bought a £400 banger which, when we leave, will be worth £400, will sell the high miler in next month or so, and relax on the flight, content in the knowledge we will buy a car when we get there.....

Used to be obsessed by cars, now see them as a utility: of course, that might change when we hit Oz.....

bigAPE

Nope, the Duty and GST are calculated on the "As Landed" value of the car this if the dockside value of the vehicle and is generally around 60% of the Australia used street value. It's best to get a valuation done now by an approved valuer in Australia (see my article) and then you will have the exact Customs Value which Customs will accept without question 99% of the time. if you car is with A$20,000 the value for Customs Duty and GST would likely be around $12,000 (~£5,400).

See my article and the attached Excel for more details.

You must have owned the vehicle you plan to import for at least 12 months and been in the UK with that car for every at least 365 days. They will ask for photocopies of your passport and a "diary" detailing every trip you have taken outside of the UK during the time you have owned it (for me that was about 45 trips in 7 years) when you apply for your VBS10 Approval to Import.

Al

Twinset

Cheers!!

Have the rules changed at all in last year, or was my understanding a little shaky...?

Still selling this side of the pond, then buy that side...!!

Twinset

bigAPE

It's always been this way. The explanation of how the tax is calculated is extremely confusing the first time you read it. I was also under the impression that it was calculated on the full purchase price of your car. Took me a long phone call to DOTARS and a couple to the authorised valuer here in Australia to fully understand it, even then I was caught out by other costs when we got off the dock.

This is one of the reasons I created that Excel spreadsheet (in the article which I seriously recommend you read) so that it can work out the majority of the costs for you. It assumes you're shipping to Victoria, but the costs are 98% the same for most states with some regional differences (apparently no stamp duty on the road registration in WA). It does, however, work on the understanding that you have the valuation done by an Authorised Valuer here in Australia.

hopalong

at risk of stating the obvious......a friend of mine shipped out an old volvo estate, filled it up with all their stuff and put one of those plastic roof rack boxes on the roof, full, car practically dragged along the ground it was so overladen. Anyhow if you are shipping a car or van that can actually be filled (as opposed to a sports car!) that should save something on your personal belongings shipment and so may go someway to offset the cost of shipping the car. Afraid I don't know which shipper they used.

bigAPE

... and how many weeks did the car stay in Customs at his expense while they tore the car and each box apart ?

I have heard freaking horror stories about people who have done this. One guy had to pay A$3,000 because customs wouldn't allow the car off the docks until all the contents and the interior of the car were fumigated! All it takes is one dead spider in a box and alarms would go off, helicopters would land and guys in HazMat suits would come in as if it was a dead Alien body. You think customs guys at the airports here are bad, these guys on the docks are the big dogs.

You're call of course, but your taking a big risk. The advice we were given by all of the shipping agents we spoke to was to get the car valeted and detailed inside and out, steam clean the exterior and specifically the underneath and wheel arches. Then and only then once it was spotless would you put it in the container or on the RORO. Even then it depends on the Customs Inspector you get. Mine was thankfully out of inspection in a a couple of hours, but another that was there when I went to the docks had been there for four days and after the first couple of day they start to charge you for storage of your car on their property at a huge expense.

hopalong

hi big ape
thanks for that, my friend is the only experience I know of and so would have felt guilty had anyone done it and there been a problem. They must have been lucky as no problem with aqis, but I guess like most things on this forum there are good experiences and bad. I wouldn't know what the equivalent cost of shipping the contents separately would have been, maybe £1,000, perhaps less, but don't know cubic footage of volvo estate?
I just wanted to mention it as a possibility to the original poster, as I hadn't noticed anyone else raising it on the thread.

BATS666

Filling your car with stuff is a risky business as BA says.
You should make sure that the car is spotless inside & out, otherwise you have to pay for it to be professionally cleaned as well as paying for a low loader to take it to the cleaners.
Mine had just had a repsray so the whole of the front end was clean. The wheel arches are the main interest for AQIS as well as the engine bay. Bit of a problem with a Tuscan as the bonnet is bolted down and I had to remove it before the AQIS guy arrived.
One leaf, one bit of mud and off the car goes to be cleaned. I was dreading it as you have to be v careful with GRP and the looney paintwork that TVR insist on putting on their motors. The manual also says not to steam clean any of the engine ...which ofcourse is exactly what they'd want to do.
Filling your car with personal effects will just slow the whole process down. Customs will want to have a look before AQIS take their turn.
I also read somewhere (Pistonheads again) that if you put spares in the car you don't pay import duty and GST. Not true. I needed to put some basic spares in for obvious reasons (u dont get any here) but I still had to pay the taxes. However, I'm guessing that if I hadnt declared them they would have got thru tax free as Customs didnt look at the car. Your call on that.

Geelong Gent

Really? you mean there are people out there that would not sit and drool

Bit like the rumour of people that dont like eating chocolate - I just dont believe it

darrellandsarah

we bought over our 06 nissan navara.cost me 1400pound to ship it and the total on the road bill in qld ended up at just under $6000.for us it was finanacially worth it.if we sold in the uk we would have lost between 10 and 12.000pounds.we paid to have the truck valetted in the uk but ended up having to pay $100 for cleaning.

Twinset

Thank you: all calcs were based on a coupe of spreadsheets I had seen from people, but the reatil price vs landed price stuff, as you say, just is not clear from DOTARS....appreciate the time and effort you have put into this.

Twinset

BATS666

Nope, seriously, I was there when the seal on the container was opened, after it had cleared Customs and been onward shipped to the freight clearance depot. Not an C officer in site. It then sat at the freight clearance depot for about a week waiting for the AQIS inspection.....which lasted all of 3 minutes.....then i got to drive it away....after which it sat in a garage for 4 weeks while the idiots at DOPI (apt name) got someone with more than 1 brain cell to enter the personal import documents onto their computer system. Only THEN could I register it ! :curse: